Estimated prevalence of myopia by age and ethnicity in boys and girls combined

Prevalence (%) of myopia by age

Year

Ethnicity

5 years

10 years

15 years

18 years

White

1.6 (1.0, 2.5)

6.7 (4.1, 10.3)

16.7 (10.6, 24.5)

22.8 (14.6, 32.7)

2005*

East Asian

6.3 (4.4, 9.2)

34.5 (26.7, 44.0)

69.0 (60.6, 76.8)

79.6 (73.0, 85.4)

2005*

South Asian

5.3 (2.9, 9.6)

9.2 (5.2, 15.7)

13.0 (7.4, 21.6)

13.9 (7.7, 23.5)†

2005*

South-East Asian

6.7 (2.9, 14.4)‡

11.5 (5.3, 23.3)

23.7 (11.7, 41.8)

28.0 (13.8, 48.2)†

2006§

Black in Africa

2.8 (1.5, 5.0)

1.8 (1.1, 2.7)

5.5 (3.1, 9.0)

1993§

Black not in Africa

4.8 (4.0, 5.7)

8.2 (6.8, 9.8)

19.9 (14.3, 26.5)¶

2006§

Middle Eastern or North African

3.5 (2.0, 5.7)

5.5 (3.4, 8.8)

19.6 (12.8, 28.6)

47.1 (34.2, 60.4)

2008§

Hispanic or Latino

5.0 (1.9, 11.6)

4.7 (1.8, 11.0)

14.3 (5.8, 29.8)

1995§

Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

2.6 (0.5, 11.6)‡

5.5 (1.4, 20.3)

23.0 (6.9, 57.6)

1987§

American Indian or Alaska native**

11.3 (3.3, 31.4)

20.2 (6.0, 49.9)

29.8 (10.7, 59.7)††

1985§

Prevalence estimates are medians (95% credible intervals in parenthesis) of the posterior distributions for predicted prevalence from the Bayesian multilevel binomial logistic regression of the log odds of myopia adjusting for ethnic specific associations with age, ethnic specific associations with survey year (for white, East Asian and South Asian children, only) and environmental setting. The multilevel model takes into account that some study populations provide only one age-specific estimate whereas others contribute data for several age groups.

Estimates correspond to urban populations.

*Survey year fitted in the model.

†Estimate at age 16.5 years (upper limit of available data).

‡Estimate at age 7 years (lower limit of available data).

§Mean survey year weighted by study population size.

¶Estimate at age 12.5 years (upper limit of available data).

**Estimates correspond to rural populations as there were no data in an urban setting for this ethnic group.